Want to take home $80K? Enter your target net income and we'll reverse-engineer your hourly, daily, and project rates.
This tool runs 100% in your browser. All computation happens locally on your device — your input is never uploaded to any server. Results are for reference only.
Most freelancers price backward: they pick an annual take-home target and work forward to a rate. The math reverses a salary — gross income needed = (target income + business costs) ÷ (1 − effective tax rate), then hourly rate = gross ÷ billable hours. Billable hours are the multiplier most people underestimate: out of 48 working weeks × 40 hours, a 60% utilization leaves only 1,152 chargeable hours a year. Every hour you cannot bill (proposals, admin, marketing, unpaid time) must be covered inside the rates you do charge, which is exactly why a freelance rate looks so much higher than an equivalent salaried wage.
Left: the reverse chain — target income plus taxes and business costs gives gross income, which is divided across billable hours. Right: billable capacity and what each billable hour must recover.
Lena is a freelance designer who wants $80,000/yr take-home. She works 52 weeks minus 4 of vacation = 48 weeks at 40 hrs/week, but only 60% of her time is billable. She pays about 25% effective tax and spends $6,000/yr on software and insurance.
Want to take home $80K? Everything runs locally; nothing is uploaded.
FreeToolHub Reverse Rate Calculator is a free browser-based tool — want to take home $80K? No signup, no upload; everything runs locally in your browser.
Want to take home $80K? Find out what to charge. Target-first freelance pricing, free.
A reverse pricing calculator for freelancers and consultants. Instead of asking "what's my hourly rate?", it asks "I want to take home $X — what must I charge?" It factors in taxes, business costs, non-billable time, and vacation to calculate the minimum hourly, daily, and project rates you need.
Enter your target annual net income (what you want in your pocket). Add your effective tax rate, annual business costs, working hours per week, billable percentage, and vacation weeks. The tool instantly shows your required hourly rate, day rate (8 hours), and project rate. The breakdown shows how much goes to taxes, costs, and your pocket per billable hour.
Working backward from a target income exposes which lever actually moves the required hourly rate. The biggest is billable ratio: at a realistic 60% billability, a 40-hour week yields 24 billable hours — the other 16 go to sales, admin, and marketing, and pretending otherwise is why many freelance rates fail in year one. The second lever is unworked time: vacations, holidays, and sick days come out of the denominator before you set a rate, which is why the calculator asks for them explicitly instead of assuming 52 weeks. The third is business costs — software, insurance, hardware, workspace — which must be recovered through the rate before any income survives. Moving any one lever shows its price immediately: adding two vacation weeks or dropping billability ten points raises the required rate more than most people expect, and seeing that before quoting a year of projects is exactly the point.
Most calculators start with your hourly rate and calculate your income. This tool works backwards — you enter your target take-home income and it calculates the minimum rate you need to charge. This is more aligned with how freelancers actually think about pricing.
Billable percentage is the portion of your working hours that you actually bill to clients. The rest goes to admin, marketing, learning, and breaks. Most freelancers bill 50-70% of their time. If you bill 60% of a 40-hour week, that's 24 billable hours per week.
Yes. Enter your effective tax rate (not your bracket — your actual rate after deductions). The tool calculates the gross income needed to hit your target after taxes and business costs.
Most experienced freelancers land at 60-70% — 24 to 28 billable hours in a 40-hour week. New freelancers often assume 80-90% and discover the difference is consumed by finding clients, invoicing, and administration. Starting at 60% produces a rate that survives contact with reality.
A forward calculator multiplies a rate by hours to estimate income. This one runs backward from the income you need, through taxes, business costs, non-billable time, and vacation, to the minimum viable rate. It answers the question that actually matters when setting prices: what is the floor below which a project loses you money?
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